The machine that can read your mind

In yet another extraordinary scientific breakthrough, a group of neuroscientists and researchers at UC Berkeley in California have developed computer software that can translate brain activity measured by fMRI scanners into actual images. In other words, they have succeeded in developing machines that can read our minds.

Previously, the researchers had succeeded in developing a computer programme that could reproduce images from black and white photographs that people taking part in the experiments were looking at. This time, people taking part watching movie trailers whilst scans were taken of their brain that were then translated into images.

So far, the software can only pick up on images that people have actually seen and the scientists involved say that they are a long way from being able to develop software that can pick up on the thoughts and feelings of others.

Twenty years ago, the idea of a machine that could read our minds would have seemed far-fetched, the kind of thing you might expect to see in a science fiction film only. For me, this is yet another hugely exciting development that gets tucked away in my personal file of things that once might have seemed too amazing to be true that are now part of our everyday reality.

I think it’s an amazing development – one that hopefully takes us one step closer to understanding how psychic readers can ‘tune in’ to what may even be the same frequencies that the fMRI scanners register, giving us a scientific explanation for what up until now has seemed like magic. Perhaps then we’ll also be able to give concrete answer to questions about whether some people are just more gifted than others with psychic skills, or whether and how we can all develop them to the same degree.

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